BIGFOOT monster truck goes electric

A "green" car-stomping, metal-twisting, glass-shattering monster truck may seem like an oxymoron, but it's also a reality. BIGFOOT, one of the most famous monster trucks in the world, has received an all-electric makeover. Bigfoot 4x4, Inc. teamed up with battery manufacturer EnerSys to create the ODYSSEY Battery BIGFOOT No. 20 Monster Truck, which is claimed to be the world's first electric monster truck. We'll just go ahead and call it E-BIGFOOT.

E-BIGFOOT uses 36 ODYSSEY PC1200 car batteries, thirty of which power the custom-built DC electric motor that was developed by Phoenix-based motor builder Dennis Berube. The motor puts out 350 horses and more than 800 lb-ft (1,085 Nm) of direct-drive torque. A ProFab transfer case routes power to the custom-built driveshafts, and onward to the ZF planetary axles. Internal wet disc brakes provide stopping power.

The remaining six batteries are dedicated to powering the braking and steering systems. In all, the batteries weigh around 1,375 pounds (624 kg), making up a fair chunk of BIGFOOT 20's 11,000-pound (4,990 kg) weight.

E-BIGFOOT debuted at the SEMA show this past October and crushed its first cars in Missouri about a week later. The BIGFOOT team plans to continue testing and tweaking it before taking it on the monster truck circuit next year. Specific dates will be announced in the near future.

There's no word on how far the electric motor can push the beast of a truck, but given that the BIGFOOT EV will spend most of its time rolling over cars in the confines of an arena, we don't think any drivers will be too inconvenienced by a dead battery.

"A lot of naysayers speculated that we'd never even make it to the cars, much less on top of them," said Bob Trent, a BIGFOOT VP. "And now we just ran this thing for more than 20 minutes without recharging it. This is really just the start of what this truck can, and will do."

You can watch exactly what it can do in the short clip below. Some folks will certainly be taken aback by the lack of a screen-rattling truck-engine soundtrack, but the vivid crunching and crackling of the cars underfoot provide an interesting substitute.